Coin depositing and dispensing machines, electrically connected to cashier equipment, such as a POS cash register, an electronic cash register, or a teller management machine, and enabling depositing and dispensing of cash to be performed automatically according to electrical signals from such cashier equipment, have already been developed for performing cash transactions with customers accurately and rapidly at a cash register in a store or, in a case of a financial institution, at a counter or the like.
In such a conventional coin depositing and dispensing machine, a coin acceptance port that is capable of receiving a plurality of coins simultaneously is provided on the upper front face of the machine body, and a feeding belt for feeding the coins further back into the machine body is provided at the bottom of the coin acceptance port and extends along a side face of the machine body. The feeding belt leads to a coin passage, which is formed in an L-like shape comprised of an identifying passage and a sorting passage extending continuously from the identifying passage. The identifying passage serves to transport coins fed by the feeding belt further back into the machine body. The sorting passage is provided in a back area and extends in a widthwise direction of the machine body so as to change the transporting direction of the coins. The sorting passage is provided with denomination-specific sorting holes, which are arranged along the length of the sorting passage and serve to sort coins based on their denominations.
Conveyor belts for transporting coins including a first transporting belt, a second transporting belt, and a third transporting belt are provided above the coin passage, which is comprised of the identifying passage and the sorting passage. The first transporting belt is laid across a first pulley, which is rotatably provided above a feeding end of the feeding belt, and a second pulley, which is rotatably provided at the middle of the identifying passage. The second transporting belt is laid across the second pulley and a third pulley, which is rotatably provided immediately behind a corner portion in the back area of the machine body. The third transporting belt is laid across the third pulley and a fourth pulley, which is rotatably provided at the terminal end portion of the sorting passage. These pulley are rotatably supported by horizontal shafts so that the pulleys are vertically positioned, perpendicular to the bottom face of the coin passage (e.g. See Japanese Utility Model Registration No. 2520891 (pages 2-3, and FIGS. 1 and 2) (“JP '891”).
Furthermore, conventionally known examples of a method of transporting coins in a coin passage include a protrusion-equipped transporting belt method using a transporting belt that is provided with transporter protrusions. According to this protrusion-equipped transporting belt method, a rotating disk is tilted at a predetermined angle with respect to a horizontal direction; a coin passage is connected at a starting end thereof to the upper part of the rotating disk and tilted at the same angle as that of the rotating disk; and a transporting belt provided with protrusions is stretched along the coin passage by pulleys that rotate in parallel with a coin transporting face of the coin passage. Coins are pooled between the rotating disk and a hopper provided at a top face side of the rotating disk. And by synchronously rotating the rotating disk and the transporting belt, one coin at a time is picked up and delivered to a transporter protrusion of the transporting belt by a picking-up member projecting from the top face of the rotating disk, and the picked-up coin is transported by the transporter protrusion pushing the rim of the coin (e.g. See Japanese Patent No. 3325678 (pages 3-4, and FIG. 10) (“JP '678”).